Not Knowing
by Wiztine
Summary: Will eventually be six one-shots throughout Elphaba's life, they should all deal with not knowing, in some form or another. Bookverse.
1. Happenstance

**A/N: This is the first of what will probably be five one-shots dealing with the root -hap-. It was bothering me one day that there must be a relationship between happy and mishap, and then it grew from there. They'll follow Elphaba's life. **

**I don't own _Wicked_, and there is a line in here that is a direct quote from _Wicked_, but I don't want to give it away so I'm not going to say what it is, just that I don't own it.**

Happenstance

It was twilight at Nest Hardings. The long dark shadows streaking across the dusty ground looked to Nanny like fingers, outstretched and groping, streaming from the harsh, fiery sun. It was Nature in her best Art, withholding nothing in her triumphant finale.

Nanny sat quietly, listening to the sunset with the calm half-smile of a simpleton. At her feet was a small woven basket. Earlier, Nanny had been rocking it with her foot, but she'd been distracted by the sunset.

Abruptly, the sun sank out of sight; its intention of exiting the scene had been well concealed behind the glory of the spectacle.

"Aww, what a shame," murmured Nanny, disappointed. There was a moment of sympathetic silence for her, and then a small cry came from the basket. "Oh, hush you," said Nanny, but she bent down to the basket and picked up the child within.

In the blues and grays of the evening, they made a perfect picture as mother and babe, a dark silhouette of love.

A picture of lies, thought Nanny. She was no mother, and all the love she showed was forced. She convinced and twisted and cajoled herself to love the child. Some lies were sanctioned by heaven, she believed.

But it was easier to make herself love little Elphaba here in the darkness, when the green of the child's skin blended into the muddle of the night. During the day the green was bold, bright, accusing and shaming. Was it fair for such a young life to make people older and wiser feel that way, or for the child to have to deal with the consequences, thought Nanny. Perhaps not, but life wasn't fair.

Maybe she was paying for the sins of her parents, maybe she was the payment; maybe she was getting a head start on paying for her own future sins. Maybe she was a sign of terrible things to come. Or maybe it was completely random.

Some sensible voice inside Nanny told her that nothing was random, that everything happened as a result of something, whether it was the whim of Lurline, the plan of the Unnamed God, or a simple seed planted. However, that implied that something was to blame, and Nanny didn't think that Elphaba's color was enough trouble to blame anybody for, so she made up her mind that Elphaba's verdigris was entirely happenstance.


	2. Haphazard

**A/N: Yeah, I'm still working on this. Two down, four to go. Bear in mind that this is not supposed to have a traditional plot, this is a bit more abstract. I have not gained ownership of Wicked since posting the first chapter.**

Haphazard

"You can be saved," boomed the voice of Frexspar the Godly. "Your past sins can all be erased and you can begin anew!" He grew animated as he rode the climax of his sermon. The Quadlings squatting around him seemed to absorb his energy, staring at the wildly gesticulating man with their eyes wide.

"The mercy of the Unnamed God is infinite. The worst sinner can redeem himself. My daughter," – he pulled a girl of about eight in front of him – "born green as an actual physical manifestation of her sins, can be, and is, saved." The Quadlings began murmuring amongst themselves. The greenness! The sheer, unabashed greenness, staring them down!

"Yes! See her, take it in, absorb it in full! It cannot hide – sin cannot be hidden – but she is saved! Look!"

He thrust his eldest daughter forward, into the crowd. She stumbled, a fault of the unploughed field. For a moment her arms flailed, waving for balance to rescue her, and the setting sun at her back transformed her into a dark, faceless, thrashing wild creature. Then the moment was over, and she straightened, and she faced the crowd and the sun no longer cast her in shadow, but it was too late. The crowd had drawn back fearfully. A soft 'Mama!' was heard from behind the legs of a massive dame. It seemed to echo in the stillness, 'Mama, mama, mama, mama.'

The green girl flinched, and tensed visibly. The echoes quickly dissipated. A second of silence, then a forced chuckle from the minister.

"Ahe, Elphaba now, -"

He stopped short as Elphaba twitched mightily, convulsed, and broke out of it by surging into fluid motion, away from the father.

"Dammit!" he swore, too frustrated and angry to care about his flock's ears, even as he reasoned his outburst as righteous anger at the obstacle to his preaching. "Dammit, Elphaba…"

Elphaba didn't hear him. She was beyond hearing anything, all she could do was feel. She felt hot sticky air only sluggishly moving out of her way. She felt her boots pounding into the ground, but sinking slightly into the mud with every step. She felt blood course through her, squeezing past and spurting to keep up with her. She felt all these, but they didn't register. The only feeling that registered she felt to be too complex for an eight-year-old's words.

It had started with the cry for Mama. A level of shame was part, shame of scaring a child. Then perhaps injustice. Elphaba no longer had a mother to cry out to. And there was the fact that it hadn't been an atypical reaction. She didn't know why her skin was the way it was. After hearing Frex explain it as her sins over and over, she had stopped believing in _that_ story. Shame, injustice… guilt? But that was unreasonable. She didn't try, didn't want, to be the way she was.

She shook her head, trying to clear it. What surfaced was her father's voice, not the words, but just the tone. The false cheeriness, trying to smooth the moment over, the ill-concealed strain, it made her want to twitch and convulse.

So she ran, directionless, to give her body motion. She didn't watch where she was going, didn't try to remember how to get back home. Like an uncontrolled, haphazard, exothermic reaction, she turned off her mind and let her body release huge sums of energy. Physical energy, in sweat rolling down her skin, heat energy steaming from her burning face, mental energy as she closed her eyes and willed her mind to shut, and perhaps even magical energy as swamplands underfoot hardened enough for her feet to pound in frustration.


	3. Happenings

**A/N: Yes. See? Not abandoned. Totally not.**

The green girl sitting in the tree was the first to spot the letter carrier as he trotted his horse along the dusty road to Rush Margins. Granted, she had very little competition as it was just past high noon and the town lay deserted, all others either trying to coax crops through the draught or seeking shade and relief from the summer scorch. Nevertheless, she was undaunted as she jumped down and then ran out to meet the rider. Any mothers to witness her display would have clucked their tongues and warned their broods to not follow the example; it was ridiculous to sit in trees while there was work to be done and even more ridiculous to run after letter carriers at the age of seventeen. Honestly, such behavior was more fitting for children a fourth of her age! However, no mothers were present to bear witness, and the girl had no mother to reprimand her at home, so she made her way out of the town unhindered.

It wasn't long before she got close enough for him to notice her, and he pulled his horse to a stop as she reached him, panting slightly.

"Please," she said. "Do you have any letters for an Elphaba Thropp?" If the man noticed her unusual skin color, he made no comment. He had travelled across rather more of Oz than the average Munchkinlander and had seen evidence everywhere of its extraordinary diversity.

"Elphaba Thropp?" he asked, twisting around to rummage in his sack.

"Yes," she said, "postmarked to Rush Margins, most likely."

"Ah, here we are. Miss Elphaba Thropp, Rush Margins." He pulled out a thick envelope addressed in black ink and closed by a heavy red wax seal. "From Shiz University."

Her body tensed at the last detail. _At last_, she thought. She mumbled a thank you and gave him a few coins in exchange for the letter, gripping it tightly as she left, not towards the town again, but slightly to the right, where a decent sized home could be seen in the distance.

When she reached the front door and stumbled across the threshold, she made for the rickety stairs leading to the second story, but was halted halfway up by a soft voice.

"Elphaba?"

Elphaba turned, to see her wheelchair bound sister at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at her.

"Elphaba, are you going to be up in your room?" she asked.

"Yes."

The younger girl's eyes grew wet and the corners of her mouth trembled. Elphaba sighed.

"Nessa, would you like to come upstairs for a while?"

"Ooh, yes," she beamed.

Elphaba turned and went to her sister, slipping the letter into a large pocket in her skirt. The action wasn't missed by Nessa's sharp eyes.

"What's that?" she asked as Elphaba lifted the fourteen-year-old's slight frame and started back upstairs.

"A letter."

"To you?"

"Yes."

"Who from?"

"Shiz."

"Ooh, what's it say?"

"I don't know yet."

There was a pause, filled with the sound of Elphaba's breathing. Then they reached the top and Elphaba entered a small room with a window overlooking the front yard of the house and the road leading into town. Nessa was gently dumped on the low bed and Elphaba took out the letter and sat at a small desk, preparing to break the seal.

"Elphaba?"

"Yes?" murmured Elphaba, distracted.

"I hope you're rejected." The green girl's head snapped up in surprise. "I don't want you to go away to school. I don't want you to leave us. I don't want you to leave me. I need you here, they don't."

"Oh Nessa…" said the big sister. "I'll always be there for you when you need me." And she left the letter on the desk, getting up to go rub circles on her sister's back in the light of the unexpected declaration. That was how Nanny found them, hours later, when she called them to dinner.

Afterwards, when her family was asleep, Elphaba opened her letter of acceptance and found her twinge of guilt and sorrow on Nessa's behalf greatly outstripped by a roaring tide of excitement at the happenings her life was about to take.


End file.
